With Berto's latest Coder Diary out, I thought I'd put together a During Action Report showcasing some of the new features the new, free 1.05 UPDATE will include.

First, disclaimer: I am just a beta tester and a Forum Member, the views presented here are mine, and mine alone. Also, please keep in mind the print screens shown here present alpha and beta code, and may or may not be what the final version of the game will look like.

That done, I will first present the designer view to the new scenario.

1. Choosing your Battles

I have a little history project under way, mapping a select few Finnish front battles into EF. First, under my and Warhorse's Forgotten Battle Mod, and now, bringing them into EF 1.05. At the moment I am working on a few early Continuation War battles.

The scenario in the making here is the 18th Division 1941 crossing of the Vuoksi river, a battle that has hardly received even a footnote in the history books, yet very decisive for the continuous advance in the sector. The Finnish push at Karelian and Olonets Isthmuses during the late summer 1941 are viewed as smooth advances, yet it was nothing like that. RKKA units put out a dogged defensive struggle, not willing to lose any ground, launching determined counter attacks, and things often hang in the tightest of balance. This battle was such that if gone wrong from the Finnish point of view, the whole sector would have faced a great struggle to launch an offensive across the river should the RKKA forces been allowed given time to dig in on the southern shores of the river.

So, here we go. First, here's the location of the battle, on Karelian Isthmus:

10 July 1941 marked the beginning of a Finnish push for the reconquest of Karelian Isthmus, ceded to Soviet Union after Winter War. River Vuoksi marked a formidable object to these plans, and on August 16, Col. Pajari's 18th Division was given orders to secure a bridgehead south of the river. Moving forward, they soon identified a weakly defended sector some 10 km west of Vuosalmi. As it happened, the location was by the narrow Hopeasalmi straits the 18.D was intimately familiar with from their peacetime wargames in the area. Engineer Capt. Tuurna, responsible for arranging the crossing, was first to say what everyone was thinking: "Yes, let us hop this river as we always do!"

During the night of August 17th, Pajari send his 27th IR to silently cross the river, with orders to secure a bridgehead south of the river. Then, as the regiment artillery would join in support, they would continue towards the vital ground of Kylä-Paakkola heights, a location fiercely contested during the last days of Winter War. At the same time, the 49th IR would advance towards Vuosalmi from North.

In the morning of August 18th Colonel Koptevski begun to realise the grim situation of his rag tag battle group, put together from various bits of surviving Red Army units in the area. Having finally received the permission to form a new defensive line south of the river, albeit with orders to still maintain a bridgehead on the northern shores, he had planned for a determined rearguard action against a Finnish attack from the North. Instead, he faced an imminent danger of encirclement before the reinforcements he knew were already on their way would reach the area.

Major Turkka's 3rd Battalion of 27th Regiment was the first to cross the river. The land to the right consist of a small peninsula reaching into river Vuoksi, while the hostile shore is to the top left corner of the picture, some 750 meters from the point of origin. The shortest distance to cross the river would have been from the tip of the peninsula, some 400 meters, but as the major road led to this location this is where the crossing started from.

According to 27th Infantry Regiment HQs War Diary, 3/27th crossed the river during the 2300-0230 hrs of night 17./18. August.

If the original picture description quoted below the pic is correct, and these really are men of 3/27th, then the visibility is not that bad: white nights of Nordics are not quite over yet in August. Something not possible to represent with the Dawn Attack of the earlier game versions, and something the 1.05 enables us just perfectly. More of that in the coming posts EDIT: Sunset - sunrise? Full moon or not? It is possible to find out, I did: Sun set on 17 Aug 41 at 20:58, and rose again on 18 Aug 41 at 05:23. Dawn and dusk (sun is within 6 degrees below horizon with decent visibility) is 0:52 hrs. Moon rose at 23:58 but was already at its last quarter (20% visible). I wonder if the photographer named the right battalion here? The second boat seems to have its engines on, something that was only allowed when second battalion crossed the river, from 03:30 on. Could be that the text is wrong, and this is already 2/27th instead?

More pictures can be found from www.sa-kuva.fi with search string "Hopeasalmi", and with dates say 19410801 - 19410830.

This is the third evolution of the map of the area. My first scenario here was the 3rd battle for Vuosalmi, on July 1944. Then I enlargened the map a bit towards west to better cover the 1st battle for Vuosalmi, on March 1940. Finally, I again enlargened the map towards west, to allow better for the historic river crossing. Size of the map is 58 x 52 hexes, or 14,5 km x 13 km.

When modeling the map, I had access to contemporary 1:20k and 1:100k maps, which together with hex grid overlaid on top of Google Earth. See Huib Versloot's documents as how to do this. Delta is 10 meters, and elevations in the map vary between 1 and 6.

The smaller red circle represents the area where the original scenario picture is from, and the larger red circle represents the area where RKKA was expecting to repel the river crossing.

As for the Map Editor itself, probably no major surprises here. It is still a windowed app, so it can be resized at will. Also the GUI has remained original, I think.

ORIGINAL: Crossroads If the original Finnish Army picture description is right, as you can see, the visibility is not that bad: white nights of Nordics are not quite over yet in August! Something not possible to represent with the Dawn Attack of the earlier game versions, and something the 1.05 enables us just perfectly.

Here's the 2D Normal View of the area of the river crossing. From the Scenario Description:

quote:

ORIGINAL: Crossroads River Vuoksi marked a formidable object to these plans, and on August 16, Col. Pajari's 18th Division was given orders to secure a bridgehead south of the river. Moving forward, they soon identified a weakly defended sector some 10 km west of Vuosalmi.

As you can see, the first recon elements have just crossed the river for turn #1, in order to give a bit more secure feeling for those playing always blind, such as how I prefer to play all new scenarios.

Hostile forces are there, but per situation, what you see here is my imression of a weakly defended sector. Still, the few dark moments of night needs to be used to full, in order to have most troops over the water, as visibility allowing hostile artillery and air attacks will surely arrive.

On another note, this site only allows for 200KB attachments, meaning the picture quality must be set quite low. Sorry...

The final post of today: The Organization Editor and Scenario Research.

4. Organization Editor

While it is not necessarily apparent from the same old GUI, Organization Editor has seen a lot of effort put in by Berto. Lots of little bug fixes, and also, lots of basic housekeeping. While the JTCS code base has perhaps not seen radical evolution during the past years, the various data files have certainly grown in numbers! New countries, new formations, new graphics, ...

Original code has not been built to expect some of these things, and a lot of hard coded stuff has been altered to use common definitions instead. Still some work to do, as you can see here (or do you? )

As for research, For Finns I have again been able to use the actual unit War Diaries available on-line for most part.

For RKKA side, the rag tag nature of the battle group here made it a bit harder, but Colonel Koptevski can still be observed here to lead the Regiment Koptevski, remnants of 951th Regt + some other rag tag groups, into battle. The 1st Leningrad Infantry Regiment is the reinforcing unit, but did not quite fit the screen print here.

Sources and information regarding this particular scenario is availlable at my Blitz thread.

Ahh, what the heck. Here's the friendly turn one, and behold: JTCS East Front 1.05beta!

You've seen it already from Berto's various Coder Diaries, but I can confirm: it is a beauty of an experience!

Windowed, smart hotkeys, plenty of icons for the most common commands... Did I say windowed yet?

Meanwhile, do observe the new Night sequence, with visibility on 2 as I set it:

5. Into the battle

My Situation Report:

quote:

Silent night, August night, All is calm, with sky still bright Round your gear into a dinghy so small, Into the river, so tender and mild, Rowing in stealthy pace, Rowing in stealthy pace.

OK, I promise to not ever do that again!

quote:

Securing the left flank of the river crossing, forward platoons of 1/27th proceed to clear the nearby island from hostiles, only to bump into enemy positions. A firefight soon erupts in the night! Mortar units from north and east only will provide indirect fire into their positions.

Meanwhile, 3/27th maintain a strict no-firing order, and have embarked their dinghies and assault boats. Orders are to row instead of motor towards the opposite shores. Race against time has begun!

As for the Map Editor itself, probably no major surprises here. It is still a windowed app, so it can be resized at will. Also the GUI has remained original, I think.

edmap is the EXE with the fewest changes so far. I did fix a very nasty graphics glitch (affecting just some people with certain OS & graphics card combos), however.

It's not apparent except to the most sharp eyed, but I have cleaned up and polished some of those edmap toolbar buttons. In 2014, especially with the late-year (?) release of Vietnam War, expect to see more additions to that toolbar list!

While Berto already presented this in his coder diary, here it is: the new Scenario Header Dialog. It has changed somewhat, and requires the new Turn and Visibility format for that information.

Redoing old dialog boxes is no fun. Microsoft Visual Studio (the development environment I use) has a Resource Editor, for designing and tweaking dialog boxes and other UI elements. But it is cumbersome to use, and it fails to deliver the power one really needs. So sooner or later one has to exit the Resource Editor and edit the generated .rc files by hand -- in order to fine tune the graphics, but also to add per-game customizations by means of '#if defined(<game>)' directives, so that for example Allies/Axis show in the CS games while Side A/Side B show in the MW games. But one must be careful to Remove the resource from VS first and Add it back after the external hand editing session. Otherwise, VS complains that the resource was "opened in another editor" and refuses to recognize the resource! (An obscure work-around is then needed for the fix.) Another gotcha: If you employ the Resource Editor on a .rc file, it strips that file of any '#if defined(<game>)' customizations!

The final post of today: The Organization Editor and Scenario Research.

While it is not necessarily apparent from the same old GUI, Organization Editor has seen a lot of effort put in by Berto. Lots of little bug fixes, and also, lots of basic housekeeping. While the JTCS code base has perhaps not seen radical evolution during the past years, the various data files have certainly grown in numbers! New countries, new formations, new graphics, ...

Original code has not been built to expect some of these things, and a lot of hard coded stuff has been altered to use common definitions instead. Still some work to do, as you can see here (or do you? )

"Still some work to do"? Much, much more work still to be done!

In various ways, the codebase is not in good shape, shows its age, and gives clear signs of 15 years of neglect since John Tiller mostly stopped working in the late 1990s on what was then, for its time, basically a finished project; or so it may have seemed. Since then, so many data additions and changes. New games, new requirements, new possibilities. It took me four weeks last August to merge the CS codebase with the MW one. That was a huge effort. Fixing the many other issues continues, will require even greater effort. But maybe by mid 2014, I'm going to have this codebase tap dancing!

So it was not perhaps the best decision to start a DAR during the Christmas and New Years break, but just wanted to get it started. Here we are, finally, with turn 2.

Opening the PBEM file, and it being early days, I opt to not watch the action replay from my opponents turn. Instead, I proceed to watch the friendly indirect fire phase, with only a few mortars having targets plotted.

With the new release, there's been a ton of basic work before adding any new features such as the dynamic day / night sequence. Some of the basic works has been about fixing old bugs, so I am happy to report opting not to watch enemy replay does not drop the animation speed to slow.

As for this scenario, as I mentioned this is the first PBEM test against a live opponent. I have hot seated this several times to ensure the basic structure is there, but there is nothing like a play test against a seasoned opponent to have suggestions for further improvement, even before we can make observations about play balance / victory levels.

So far, my To Do list reads as follows:

quote:

- Extend the map to north by at least 4 hexes, to have more space for the attacking forces - Ensure no Op Fire during turn #1 - Add Flares / Starshells (duh!)

Picture of the day: 7th Light Infantry has received orders to cut the West-East road north of the river, but find the location secured my enemy troops.

No historical situation report from National Archives for this turn, as the archive is down for maintenace this weekend...

Opening the PBEM file, and it being early days, I opt to not watch the action replay from my opponents turn. Instead, I proceed to watch the friendly indirect fire phase, with only a few mortars having targets plotted.

I never watch the action replay, NEVER. I think it brings uncertainty and thus more realism as a commander of all troops. Recognize that it is at the expense of effectiveness and competitiveness, but that did not matter much to me. I only see the replays when I play a tournament.

For many years I have always followed the same rule in my battles with Napoleonics from HPS, maybe that's why my curriculum is at rock bottom

27th Infantry is beginning their river crossing in earnest, only to find out an enemy patrol boat approaching the area! Several machineguns open up on the boat, but to no avail. Meanwhile, elements of the 27th are busy clearing the island next to the landing place, while the first firefights erupt at opposite shore.

quote:

ORIGINAL: lecrop

I never watch the action replay, NEVER. I think it brings uncertainty and thus more realism as a commander of all troops. Recognize that it is at the expense of effectiveness and competitiveness, but that did not matter much to me. I only see the replays when I play a tournament.

For many years I have always followed the same rule in my battles with Napoleonics from HPS, maybe that's why my curriculum is at rock bottom

I am trying to say something about the new version in each of my posts, but was struggling to think of something. But here we are: Extreme Fog of War! Extreme Fog of War has now been made a tad more difficult with the new version. "Unknown firing at unknown" is pretty much all the information I get at this stage

I am trying to say something about the new version in each of my posts, but was struggling to think of something. But here we are: Extreme Fog of War! Extreme Fog of War has now been made a tad more difficult with the new version. "Unknown firing at unknown" is pretty much all the information I get at this stage

Well, I think it would be better something more poetic, like "You hear distant gunfire, breaking the terrifying silence, between the morning mist..."

Turn 4. Things are heating up a tad too much. I really must extend the map some 4-6 hexes to North,to allow for a build up. As things are, even as the Soviet player appears to have immediately begun a withdrawal to south of river on his western flank, he is almost caught out in the river crossing.

What's new? How about highlighting Warhorse's new terrain mod: Realistic Water Hexes Mod. While I just made the name up, the mod is very real, and is to be packed into mods folder of the version. While the 2D views will remain clear and crisp for terrain observation, the 3D views can now enjoy this beautigul greenish blue water. Beautiful innit? Mind, it is still night on this scenario, so the colors do not show up.

Turn 4. Things are heating up a tad too much. I really must extend the map some 4-6 hexes to North,to allow for a build up. As things are, even as the Soviet player appears to have immediately begun a withdrawal to south of river on his western flank, he is almost caught out in the river crossing.

Yes, back to the drawing board it was! I like my scenarios to have tactical options available to players, and with that in mind extending the map was the only option to take.

Here she is +2 hexes wide and +4 hexes tall. Quite a difference with lots of more room for deployment in the North, compared to the starting point don't you think:

The Vuoksi waterway running diagonally from Northwest to Southeast is quite an obstacle. Good luck in crossing that in future battles! Or holding it, depending which side you take.

This ends the DAR at least for now. Hopefully it gave you a glimpse of things to come, and also maybe it encourages those of you who yet have not tried out the Editors to have a go at creating a scenario of your own.

Lots of good information around to assist the scenario designer, some pointers provided here hopefully of use to you.

While Berto already presented this in his coder diary, here it is: the new Scenario Header Dialog. It has changed somewhat, and requires the new Turn and Visibility format for that information.

Redoing old dialog boxes is no fun. Microsoft Visual Studio (the development environment I use) has a Resource Editor, for designing and tweaking dialog boxes and other UI elements. But it is cumbersome to use, and it fails to deliver the power one really needs. So sooner or later one has to exit the Resource Editor and edit the generated .rc files by hand -- in order to fine tune the graphics, but also to add per-game customizations by means of '#if defined(<game>)' directives, so that for example Allies/Axis show in the CS games while Side A/Side B show in the MW games. But one must be careful to Remove the resource from VS first and Add it back after the external hand editing session. Otherwise, VS complains that the resource was "opened in another editor" and refuses to recognize the resource! (An obscure work-around is then needed for the fix.) Another gotcha: If you employ the Resource Editor on a .rc file, it strips that file of any '#if defined(<game>)' customizations!

Hi Berto, I am not sure what language you are working in, but one thing you can do in C++ with Visual Studio is use two static labels and hide/show the appropriate one based on what version of game you are running. In the class supporting the dialog, use something like GetDlgItem(IDC_ALLIES_LABEL)->ShowWindow(version == JTCS? SW_SHOW : SW_HIDE); in the DoDataExchange function.

I wish I could help more, but unfortunately, I don't have any time to devote to JTCS. Hope this helps a bit. Good luck!